PSA meets Advertainment

The fine people at the State Tobacco Education Prevention & Partnership in Colorado have come up with a great way to get a PSA (public service announcement) out to their target demographic, which in this case happens to be young adults. They are reaching out to people between the ages of 18-24 who are cigarette smokers. They have come up with a new media campaign that revolves around the Web site (and phrase) Quit Doing It. One cool fact is that they paid for the entire site, which was designed by AgencyNet and Cactus, with funds from a tobacco tax that they collected all the way back in 2004.



This snazzy, futuristic, sci-fi oriented Web site gives you the option, upon entrance to its Home Page, of choosing either a macro-Flash format, or a micro-HTML format. If your computer and browser-speed allows you to, then I would suggest checking out the Macro format, as it is a great, high-speed, fluid, and by and large well-designed flash presentation.

It starts out with a woman in a lab coat, who isn’t exactly difficult to look at, with a sexy, Elizabeth Hurly-like English accent. She comes out and explains that she has been selected to give you a tour of the “lab,” and then she basically tells you how to use the site, focusing on the “research” and “development” parts of the Web site, which each take a humorous, but informative approach to teaching the Web site viewer/participant about the negative effects of smoking. Another clever approach that is used is also voiced through the narrator. She says “At the Quit Doing It.com Labs, we are quite busy creating the most innovative tools that you can use to quit smoking. One tool we haven’t perfected yet, though, is mind reading. So, the question you have to ask yourself is: why am I here? If you’re ready to quit, check out our custom tools over in the Results department, if you’re not ready to quit yet, might I suggest checking out our research or development departments?” The “Results” section of the Web site helps the viewer/participant out by providing them with a panoply of smoking cessation tools, including another clever, relatively innovative and target-marketed media tool created by the State Tobacco Education Prevention & Partnership in Colorado: Fixnixer, a Web 2.0 program that supposedly can help you quit smoking in 21 days. But that is another story.

For me, the site was very cool. It was a fun, interactive experience. Would it actually help me quit? I dunno…but then again, I used to smoke a pack a day for five years, and then I quit last December using the patch…so…my advice, if you are seriously considering quitting smoking, would be to go to the Web site to learn a bit about the adverse effects of smoking…and have a bit of interactive fun, and then use the patch to actually quit.

Big ups to Martina over at Adverblog for making me aware of this cool new way to get kids off the ciggys.

Comedy Central’s South Park Advergames

So, the new season of South Park starts October 3rd (this coming Wednesday), and I am not going to lie, I am pretty excited. I am a pretty big fan of the show. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of wit, cynicism, and overall right-on satirical humor that pours out of those four little fourth grader’s mouths. And also, for whatever reason, I usually find myself agreeing with the views (although they usually aren’t really views…they are usually more in the form of harsh criticisms) that the shows creators (Trey Parker and Matt Stone) voice through the characters of the show. Comedy Central really hit it big when they signed this show on 10 years ago. And it is still hilarious today. But I digress; the point here is that the show is starting this Wednesday, so Comedy Central has been airing a ton of late-night rerun episodes of South Park to promote the beginning of season 12. And another one of the things that they have been airing between shows is a commercial urging the viewers to go to Comedycentral.com (attempting to brand spiral in order to promote the show) and check out the South Park page, in order to play the “South Park Big Wheel Death Rally,” among other South Park-branded games.



Big Wheel Death Rally is basically a rip-off of a game like Nintendo’s Mario Kart, and it is equally, if not more entertaining, as you can be any of 16 characters (some of which are locked), and you see all of their mannerisms and character traits come through in the game. Also, guess who bought a bit of ad space before the game even begins? Sierra Mist has a 30 second-or-so interstitial ad that takes place while the game is loading...which likely helps Comedy Central bring in a bit more revenue, or at least recoup some of the costs of creating the game (s). On the Games section of the Web site, you can play not only Big Wheel Death Rally, but also 11 other games in the following categories: Action and Arcade, Brainteasers, Card and Board, and even Wireless Games, which you can download and play on your phone. Who could resist downloading a game for their phone that has a description that begins with “Capture hippies [and] kill ninjas..."



So, yet another reason to love Comedy Central’s South Park: advergames. Comedy Central is pretty clever, as they have kept the show around for a long time, and thus they continue to profit off of it hand-over-fist…and now, they, like many other companies out there, have realized the importance of gaming for Americans in general, and, specifically, the target audience of the group that would most likely be watching South Park.

Advertainment, The American Way

American Eagle is getting pretty sly with their marketing tactics, as of late. Their newest television advertainment idea has been creating quite a buzz. Entitled “It’s a mall world,” these are 3 and 4 minute-long episodes, or vignettes, or what have you, which basically show a bunch of good looking people walking around a mall wearing all the new fashions…which just happen to be American Eagle.

Naturally, there is some heavy brand spiraling going on here too, but it is very clever brand spiraling. The video shorts refer you back to the website, www.ae.com, where you can click on the "Get the looks" page and buy the same clothes that the people in the videos wear. See, you can be just like the people on TV, neat, huh?

Is this really going to get some high school or college kid to check out the web site and buy some clothes? I would say that it will do so much more than any traditional advertising, especially traditional TV commercials. A&E is definitely on to something here. What a clever way to reach an advertising-averse group of people…make ‘em think it isn’t an ad…but, rather, a decent show to watch. It works a hell of a lot better than their competitor’s advertising, some of which depicts people in extremely bright clothes dancing around aimlessly singing about slacks or Capri pants or whatever other style is in season…cough…old navy and the gap.

And also, the videos are actually pretty clever. They mainly follow the exploits of “Dean,” a shy kid (who is awkward, and lacking in the self-confidence department) who works at a record shop, and is interested in a good-looking girl who works at, you got it, American Eagle, across the way in the mall. The videos are rather done rather well overall, they are pretty funny, and quite captivating. They even begin with a small intro. and cast list…which makes it seem as though it is an actual program on TV. Oh, and I neglected to mention the good placement by AE, or their firm, or what have you; they run during a break in MTV’s “Real World: Sydney.” Though this is probably pretty pricy placement for A&E, I think that they are likely hitting the nail right on the head in terms of reaching out to their demographic here.

You can check out the videos at www.ae.com, where they have some other nice interactive “It’s a Mall World” stuff going on too; on YouTube at This Link, or Wednesdays on MTV during the Real World, if you are in to that kind of thing.



Some of the info. on this post came from Mike Antonucci over at the Mercury Post. Check out his article on this subject Here.

Skyworks: Father of Advergaming?

Ever been curious about why to use advergames to sell your products? Or, do you know that you want to use advergames, but you just need some statistical evidence that it actually works in order to coax management, or a higher-up into seeing things your way? Or, are you just curious about using a videogame for an advertising purpose, and you want to learn a bit more about it? Well, then check out www.advergame.com.

This website is home to Skyworks, the company that (self-reportedly) pioneered the concept of advergaming. If they didn’t start it, they sure fooled me, because their initial advergaming concept suite, lifesavers’ candystand.com, which was (and, still is…I suppose) a highly-interactive site with numerous games available, all of which tote different lifesavers brand product names. This site was initially launched back in 1996. Today, according to the "Why Skyworks" section of their web site, “Over 40 Million client-branded games developed by Skyworks are played on our clients' websites each month. That's over 800 per minute and over 1 billion to date!” Pretty impressive, eh? If that is the kind of number attached to one company, imagine what the overall statistic would be for the total amount of people playing branded games…nearly unfathomable.



Here are some more handy-dandy stats provided by the fine people at Skyworks that you can use to wow anyone who wants to listen to you:


What’s more…Skyworks goes ahead and breaks down some of the individual demographics for you, giving statistical evidence to back up their claims, and citing sources for the stats. Not bad at all. Advergames are truly part of the future of advertising. As the customer becomes more and more of a king, and the audience decides when and where they will listen to brand messages, maybe it would be wise to jump on the band wagon and promote your brand in a way that people will pursue on their own, rather than throwing it at them whether they like it or not. Well, are you convinced yet?

Halo 3: Believe

The soon-to-be-released, highly anticipated X-Box game, Halo 3, was recently given an incredible promotion tool. This tool is a new web site called “Halo 3 Believe.” It is an amazing, interactive experience in which the user on the web site is basically able to fly around a massive, Halo-3 inspired environment. The environment itself is actually a real diorama that was hand-built, and is 12 ft. tall by (many) feet wide. The amount of detail and intricacy involved in the structures, characters, and scenes in the diorama is nothing short of fantastic. In addition to simply viewing the diorama, you can also view some of the recent Halo 3 TV commercials, the Making-of (the diorama) video, and read character’s stories and the general story of different parts of the scene itself. This is some great advertainment, folks.



I am a pretty big Halo buff. Back when I had X-Box live, which enables you to play online with people around the world, my girlfriend found herself in a constant struggle with a tiny black box and a controller for my free time. And that was with Halo 2…Halo 3 stands to be much better, with far better graphics, a great storyline, and an overall improved experience. However, I believe that even someone who isn’t a big Halo fanatic would still love the Believe web site. It is definitely worth checking out, mainly because it is unlike anything you have seen before. It is taking the old, seemingly outmoded craft of diorama building, and bringing it to a new medium on the ‘Net. This is worth checking out if you have the time to roam around and really get a feel for it.



Kudos to Marka at Adverblog, who brought the new Halo 3 Believe web site to my attention. And even more kudos to Dustin Burg, who wrote a Blog Article about it that had the correct link to the web site, and gave some valuable insight as to what the site is all about.

Scion's "Little Deviants" Advergame

In 2005, Scion set a sales target of 125,000 units, and ended up selling 156,485 units. In 2006, Scion set a sales barrier, rather than a target, of 160,000. They set the barrier so that they wouldn’t become too mainstream, in order to remain cool, hip, and trendy in the eyes of the fast-paced, traditional advertising-averse generation Y (Find stats Here)While Scion did spend $42.8 million in traditional, mass marketing efforts ($29.5 million on TV, $5.9 on print, $2.9 on the radio, $2.5 on the internet, and $2 million on outdoor advertising), they have made it a point to target Generation Y through unconventional methods (Stats are Here). Innovative campaigns and advertising messages, guerilla marketing, viral marketing, event sponsorship, and staying on top of technology and consumer trends in general have made Scion a success. Also, what hasn’t hurt: an Advergame that they set up called “Little Deviants.”

Scion’s Little Deviants campaign was created by an ad firm called “The Attik.” The campaign, so far, has generated quite a bit of word-of-mouth due to viral marketing, but it has also been promoted through traditional advertising including TV ads, print ads in magazines, internet banner ads, and outdoor advertising via billboards. The ads feature little, large-clawed, hellish, demon-looking creatures. Sometimes the ads show the creatures, the “deviants,” slaughtering little defenseless-looking sheep-people, called “sheeple.” All of the ads brand spiral the audience back to the hub of the Little Deviants campaign: www.littledeviant.com. Simon Needham, group creative director of The Attik, best explains this campaign’s concept:

“What we’re doing here is presenting the car as a little deviant, a little bad-ass. The brief was essentially, ‘Here is our new xD, how are we going to sell it?’ We reviewed the car, and we felt that the model was very aggressive-looking. We’re very familiar with our target audience, where they hang out, what they do and what they see. So the marketing campaign was based around a young trendleader and what they tend to be doing. The whole principle is telling a story. And we figured that presenting a book of the Fable of the Deviants was a really nice way of delivering our message (Digital Arts Online).”



On the website that all of the ads lead to, the user is cast into a first-person interactive advergame, where they are placed in this virtual world of deviants and sheeple, and they live out a fable, or a storybook, with nine chapters. The general premise is that the sheeple have been painting the city gray (literally); they have made the city gray and brown, boring and predictable, and the game’s player must kick them out of the city to save it. In each of these chapters, the player has a series of tasks that they must accomplish, most of which usually involve hitting, kicking, decapitating, dismembering, or otherwise killing the sheeple, all-the-while making little hidden references to the featured car, the Scion xD. It is definitely a violent game. However, the Little Deviants ads, and the Little Deviants game’s messages are clear, they are telling the audience to be different, to be cool, and to rebel against the ordinary. This is a great message to market to Generation Y, which has the highest generational trait of having high self-esteem; the majority of the members of Gen Y think that they are special, unique, and cool, and they strive for ways to show their peers this fact. Scion wants their cars to be one of those ways.

Disney, High School Musical 2, Advergames

So, I must confess, I don't know much of anything about the increasingly-popular "High School Musical 2" beyond what I have heard about it shattering some Nielsen records, and beyond what I see on the teenie-bopper celebrity magazine covers at the check-out aisle in the grocery store. It is obvious, however, that many people out there are much more into it then I am. In fact, according to the article that I read in MediaPost, interest in the show brought more than 23 million 'unique visitors' to Disney.com in August, breaking its all-time traffic record.

But how do you retain interest once people are on the website? Games. Disney has perhaps the largest arsenal of comic characters out there availble to them to use in their online gaming. For Disney, online gaming is a win-win situation, as they are not only generating interest in the web site, but they are also simultaneously promoting their brand. Due to Disney's media giant status, the entire website is all about promotions, cross-promotions, and more...the entire web site recently went under a full revamp, and now, with the help of the teen music kids there, it is getting more hits than ever, which is great for Disney, and also for their other corporate content sponsors, such as HP and General Mills. Disney, and its mass of subsidiary companies, is so vertically integrated now that it has begun to sell integrated advertising packages that span across their enormous media offerings, including network and cable TV, the internet, and radio and print, to partners such as Visa. These multi-platform buys take a lot of the guesswork out of media placement.

All in all, Disney is making some smart moves.

The majority of the information in this post came from The MediaPost Publication article entitled "Disney.com Sets Record Propelled By 'High School Musical 2,' by Tameka Kee, dated Thursday, 13 September, 2007.
Link to it here: http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=67350